There is, apparently, a deep philisophical divide in this country...if you look at the election results. I do not believe this is true.

I believe we are closer, politically, than we may think we are. These political battles play to the extremes and leave most of us in the middle choosing between the "lessor of the evils". Even this statement is unfair..both candidates could hardly be considered evil. Most countries in the world would be blessed to have either candidate win.

So, hopefully, we move forward.

Stevenbard, Matty, Techno, Mrgybe...thanks for your dialogue during this election. It is all part of the process.

Good post Coboard.

Perhaps we could start that march back towards civility by stopping to attack each others character and quit that endless name calling. Obamas speech was quite pointed in that respect. In a democracy, every opinion is fair game, but your opponent remains your fellow citizen throughout; something worth reminding yourself of in the midst of a heated argument.

CB--I serve on several boards with political appointees, including a substantial number of Republicans, and all of them get along. There is a key to that--we listen carefully to each other, and try to craft solutions that incorporate the good ideas of everyone, and our areas of agreement. That accepts that the sincerely held values of those who are involved in public service are legitimate, and deserve a place in the outcome. That suits me fine--I grew up in an era before trash talking, and my football coaches would bench us if we mouthed off--so we didn't. But both the listening and the accommodation have reached new lows at the National level during the last four years.

My take on this is a bit different than yours--both in what has happened in the past 4 years, and what the Republican's missed in the run-up to the election. First, it is shocking to me that, starting with a Republican bill for health care that had originally been proposed by the Heritage Institute--a bastion of conservatism--the Republicans told Obama point blank that he would have no Republican votes, no matter what. So he had to cut a deal with Big Pharma, rather than elected officials sworn to represent the public's interests. The Republicans put defeating Obama, and party discipline, above the public interest. I think that with active cooperation from the other side of the aisle, we could have had better ideas about cost control and less cookies for big pharma in the bill that passed. Sigh. Obama did not handle it well, either interpersonally or in terms of the theater, and I hope he has learned a very important lesson from that.

Second, the Rove approach of fear mongering has generated a huge backlash among people who are simply offended by the lies and trash-talking, whatever their disappointments are with Obama. Further, it overlooked the shifting demographics in this country. It is only too indicative of what a sorry excuse he has become that Rove pitched a hissy-fit with Fox over naming Obama the winner--when he went on to win all of the battleground states. Romney and his PAC's had much more money, and the benefit of being able to throw it around anonymously--but advertising to a tiny pool of undecideds, and attack ads to the already converted, were much less important than identifying your potential voters and explaining to them why it is important.

California has a tradition of fiscally conservative Republicans that are mostly libertarian when it comes to issues like sexuality, reproduction, and recreational drugs. I subscribe to both fiscal conservatism and Mrs. Patrick Cambell's view that personal behavior is a private matter "...so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." I think we need a viable, and intelligent Republican party, but not one that hates government. Instead, we need a party that can work across the aisle, and that knows that government is necessary to provide education and infrastructure, and to counterbalance the worst excesses of big businesses.

Unfortunately, most of the thoughtful Republicans that I respect here in California have been kicked out of the party in other states as they followed Rove and pandered to the evangelicals and the culture wars. They lost that war. I hope the party realizes it needs to evolve after losing twice to Obama. But to do so it needs to understand that demographics are getting worse for them, and the likely Democratic nominee will not be African-American, and thus will not give them the automatic 2 to 4% boost with angry white men that they had in running against Obama.

Political junkies, like curious people of all stripes, try to figure out what happened and why. Obama lost white men--only 38%. But he won virtually all other groups, and white voters continued to decline as a percentage, 72% this year, a drop of 2% from 2008. While men voted for Romney by a 7 point margin, women voted for Obama by a 12% margin. Single women voted for Obama by a 36% margin--three times the margin of women overall, and Latinos voted for Obama in 2012 by 69%--an increase of 2%, with Latinos also increasing their share of the total electorate by 1%. Latinos pretty much delivered your state; 74% to 23%, more than double the margin of 2008.

Then there was the ground game--comptence from the man that the righties on this forum attacked as inept. I hope they enjoy their crow.

Gloating ... over an event that knocked 312 points off the stock market within hours? 41 more days like that and the entire stock market's value will be zero point zero ... and the value of my Krugerrand will be infinite.

Now that the election is over with President Obama's win, to include the Democrats winning a slightly larger majority in the Senate, one wonders what the reset will be for the Republicans. They battled hard and long to win, but in the end they lost. While they were able to hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives, one hopes that they will have the good sense to work productively with the president and the Senate to address and resolve the growing problems and issues we now face as a nation.

The Republicans must recognize that they've lost significant ground in this election, and they could even lose further in 2014 if they don't come to the center and work diligently for meaningful progress on significant goals in a bipartisan way. Predictably though, Senator McConnell seems to be hopelessly stuck in his arrogant fantasy world thinking that he is anywhere close to center on important issues. I'm of the mind that he can't afford to play his filibuster charade too much longer without a lot of fallout. He may not like working with a black president, but the pressure will be on him to cooperate reasonably with other Republican leaders in the Senate who now appear to recognize that they must reevaluate their stance and goals in a productive way as we move into the future.

Moreover, I think it's time for Grover Norquist's pledge to be abandoned by intelligent Republicans. Even if they have a hard time with that, the fact that the Bush Tax Cuts are scheduled to automatically expire at the end of the year takes care of what needs to be done effortlessly. Then, the Democrats are in a perfect position to negotiate with the Republicans for some more practical tax cuts for the middle class. Speaking for myself, I hope that the Bush Tax Cuts expire permanently for all taxpayers, because combined with cuts in expenditures, that's our only hope to begin addressing our deficit and debt problems. If the Republicans really want to show their intent to cooperate before the year is over, they'll work with Democrats to solve the Alternative Minimum Tax issue that will negatively impact the middle class in a big way.

To give some of our friends from the right here a little understanding, mac is pretty brutal with the personal insults. Despite that fact, he is arguably the most thorough and well researched in his posts on important topics, and much of his commentary comes directly from his personal view of things rather than posting the thoughts of others in the media. In my view, mac is one of our more intellectual contributors, and he unquestionably has my respect. Maybe if some of you guys on the right sophisticated your commentary a bit with less hate and disdain, mac's hard edge would mellow a bit.

I never did any drugs growing up. Now, no way would I risk my professional license on a Federal drug charge.

I voted FOR the initiative. As a Baja traveler, I am convinced our battle against drugs is a failure. To that end, I believe it is high time that the Federal government consider legalizing pot and using the resources to fight heavy drug trafficing. Eventually, the Feds will need to come to the table if enough states do what CO has done.

Funny story...I am drying out tomatoes in my basement. My neighbor thought they were pot plants. I could not figure out why he said "I guess we know where you stand on legalizing pot". I thought it was because of my cool vibe.

To give some of our friends from the right here a little understanding, mac is pretty brutal with the personal insults. Despite that fact, he is arguably the most thorough and well researched in his posts on important topics, and much of his commentary comes directly from his personal view of things rather than posting the thoughts of others in the media. In my view, mac is one of our more intellectual contributors, and he unquestionably has my respect. Maybe if some of you guys on the right sophisticated your commentary a bit with less hate and disdain, mac's hard edge would mellow a bit.

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